Canadian Anti-racism Education and Research Society - Community Initiatives

Community Initiatives

CAERS has been instrumental in building community coalitions to expose and oppose racism across Canada. In 1992 CAERS helped form a coalition to boycott Japanese Air Lines (JAL) for alleged discriminatory seating and stop-over policy in Japan. An employee of Canadian Airlines, the booking agent for JAL, revealed a written policy that ordered JAL attendants to seat Delhi-bound passengers at the back of the plane. It was also alleged that hotel reservations for stopovers in Japan were discriminatory since Delhi-bound passengers were allocated basement accommodation. JAL denied that the seating and reservation policy were discriminatory. JAL agreed that there would be no seating and stop-over reservations without the consent of passengers.

In 1992, CAERS held a media conference and a rally to stop Tom Metzger of the California-based White Aryan Resistance Movement (WAR) from organizing in B.C. Over 3,000 attended the anti-racist rally at the Vancouver Art Gallery in downtown Vancouver .

The local organizer for WAR was Tony McAleer who had been found to have contravened section 13 of the CHRC that prohibits the dissemination of messages likely to expose groups to hatred by telephone and who was later jailed for contempt when he circumvented the CHRC decision by establishing a telephone message system in Washington State.

In the early 1990s, a local newspaper in the suburbs of Vancouver, the North Shore News, began to regularly publish articles suggesting that immigrants from Iran were taking over Canada, were responsible for crime and that the Holocaust did not occur. Authorities cited for these claims were Ernst Zundel and a number of European Holocaust deniers, including David Irving. CAERS organized demonstrations to denounce the publisher and newspaper. Two human rights complaints were subsequently filed under the BC Human Rights Code against the editor and the writer, Doug Collins. The first, by the Canadian Jewish Congress, failed but the second, by a private small businessman, succeeded and the newspaper was fined and forced to print an apology.

News of Charles Scott recruiting in the armed forces and schools in several smaller communities in BC broke in 1995. Scott was the Canadian leader of the racist Church of Christ in Israel. In response, CAERS worked with several groups, including Salmon Arm Coalition Against Racism and local Mayors to organize public events in each of the local communities Charles Scott had set up the group, including Abbotsford, Kelowna, Creston and Yahk.

Radio station AM 1040 broadcast a series of interviews in 1995 with Holocaust denier David Irving, Doug Collins and leader of Aryan Nations in Canada, Charles Scott, CAERS gave interviews to several newspapers complaining that the radio station was providing a forum for racists. Radio station AM 1040 retaliated by suing CAERS and Alan Dutton for libel. Of the two newspapers that carried interviews with Dutton, only the Western Jewish Tribune was included in the libel suit. The issue was resolved when AM 1040 dropped the libel suit and paid legal costs.

In 1999 when Nirmal Sign Gill, a caretaker at the Guru Nanak Temple in Surrey, B.C., was kicked to death by five racist skinheads, CAERS helped from an anti-racist coalition to organize a mass community march and rally. The skinheads charged in the murder of care caretaker were caught by police surveillance planning to kill many more at the Temple. The call for a mass rally was opposed by several groups and by Surrey City Council that feared that the march and rally would end in violence. To fan the fears, the Vancouver Sun reported that the neo-Nazi Heritage Front was organizing a counter-demonstration. In July 1999 more than 3,000 men, women and children peacefully marched to Bear Creek Park to hear speeches and listen to music commemorating the death of Mr. Gill. The Surrey RAMP detachment supplied over 50 uniformed police officers for traffic control and security.

In response to requests from employees at a Surrey telephone call-in centre, CAERS organized a series of community meetings concerning employment and human rights. The BC Government Employees Union had mounted a campaign to organize the employees and several had complained of retaliation from the employer. CAERS represented several employees at mediation hearings before the BC Human Rights Tribunal and Employment Insurance and won major settlements.